The Rise of the Right in Japan

What are the distinguishing characteristics of the current world political-economy, and how are they related to the rapidly unfolding political formations of the right and left in the advanced capitalist world? Basing himself on his recent book The Structure of World History (2010; English translation 2014), Kojin Karatani will discuss the defining features of successive periods of capitalist development on a world scale, and the consequences for politics domestically in the United States, the UK and Japan. He will focus, in particular, on the persistence of stagnation and crisis over close to three decades in Japan, where the resurrection of ultra-nationalism threatens to transform the political landscape and upend the regional balance of power of East Asia. Are we on the verge of a return to militarism and imperialism in Japan, this time with the support of the US? The answer to this question could determine whether war or peace is on the agenda in the region.

Speaker:

Kojin Karatani Terasaki Chair in US-Japan Relations at UCLA, and author of Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2003)

Discussants:

Hirano Katsuya Department of History, UCLA, and author of The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan (2013)

Gavin Walker Department of History, McGill University, and author of The Sublime Perversion of Capital: Marxist Theory and the Politics of History in Modern Japan (2016)